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annathepiperAs debut novels go, Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Grave is a pretty tasty one. My mood was ripe for something not SF/F, and this, a nifty melange of mystery and Gothic-flavored Victorian romance, hit the ground running. Things start off with a bang when Lady Julia Grey meets Nicholas Brisbane, an "agent of inquiry", over her husband's dying body--and she's deeply shocked when Brisbane declares to her that he believes Sir Edward was murdered. At first she doesn't buy it, but when she discovers evidence to the contrary, she joins forces with Brisbane to discover the murderer.
Raybourn's writing in this novel is solid, although there are points where she went over the top for my tastes. For example, her hero, Brisbane: very interesting all in all, but she introduced almost too many reasons for him to be Awesome in one book. He's an "agent of inquiry". He's dark and swarthily handsome. He's intelligent and temperamental. His background is mysterious, as are his bloodlines. He's a gifted musician and a gifted fighter. He's even afflicted with a Mysterious Ailment of the sort that's perfect for Gothic-flavored romances, which is to say, enough to knock him senseless when dramatically appropriate, but otherwise leave him vital and whole--but I have to admit, I was muttering "oh for--" to myself by the time I got to the part about how he's a genius violin player, and I kept muttering that when we kept getting further Revelations(TM) about him. Enough that by the time our heroine gets clued in on what's causing his Mysterious Ailment, things had gotten slightly silly.
And with all this in Brisbane's arsenal, Lady Julia doesn't always match up. I quite like that she comes from a highly eccentric family and that at least initially, her main goal in life is to be as conventional as possible. Bonus points must go to her having an entertaining father and sister who do their best to pry her out of her conventional shell. And, as well, to the author for giving a nod to period mores and letting her get her year of mourning out of the way before proceeding to investigate her husband's murder. Her family background is a strong way to wedge modern-day sensibilities into a heroine who might not otherwise have them, making her more appealing to all us modern-day readers. Problem is, this also means that in the latter third of the book, there are bits where Julia reverts to what I suspect are more actual Victorian sensibilities. As a result, in those bits she doesn't play for me nearly as well.
The murder did keep me going for a while, too, although I did guess the culprit fairly far in advance, and the ultimate motive for what brought it on to begin with wasn't quite satisfying to me. Neither was the book's habit of lapsing into the "oh if I had only KNOWN about this awful thing that's about to come" style of foreshadowing. But to balance off against that, I did quite like the chemistry between Julia and Brisbane for the most part, and I'm intrigued enough that I'll be checking out Book 2. Three and a half stars.
Raybourn's writing in this novel is solid, although there are points where she went over the top for my tastes. For example, her hero, Brisbane: very interesting all in all, but she introduced almost too many reasons for him to be Awesome in one book. He's an "agent of inquiry". He's dark and swarthily handsome. He's intelligent and temperamental. His background is mysterious, as are his bloodlines. He's a gifted musician and a gifted fighter. He's even afflicted with a Mysterious Ailment of the sort that's perfect for Gothic-flavored romances, which is to say, enough to knock him senseless when dramatically appropriate, but otherwise leave him vital and whole--but I have to admit, I was muttering "oh for--" to myself by the time I got to the part about how he's a genius violin player, and I kept muttering that when we kept getting further Revelations(TM) about him. Enough that by the time our heroine gets clued in on what's causing his Mysterious Ailment, things had gotten slightly silly.
And with all this in Brisbane's arsenal, Lady Julia doesn't always match up. I quite like that she comes from a highly eccentric family and that at least initially, her main goal in life is to be as conventional as possible. Bonus points must go to her having an entertaining father and sister who do their best to pry her out of her conventional shell. And, as well, to the author for giving a nod to period mores and letting her get her year of mourning out of the way before proceeding to investigate her husband's murder. Her family background is a strong way to wedge modern-day sensibilities into a heroine who might not otherwise have them, making her more appealing to all us modern-day readers. Problem is, this also means that in the latter third of the book, there are bits where Julia reverts to what I suspect are more actual Victorian sensibilities. As a result, in those bits she doesn't play for me nearly as well.
The murder did keep me going for a while, too, although I did guess the culprit fairly far in advance, and the ultimate motive for what brought it on to begin with wasn't quite satisfying to me. Neither was the book's habit of lapsing into the "oh if I had only KNOWN about this awful thing that's about to come" style of foreshadowing. But to balance off against that, I did quite like the chemistry between Julia and Brisbane for the most part, and I'm intrigued enough that I'll be checking out Book 2. Three and a half stars.
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Date: 2008-12-04 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-04 06:46 am (UTC)And I can't harsh on her too much for the foreshadowing, anyway, not when I'm a sucker for any book written by Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, and that's all over her books. Especially the Barbara Michaels ones. But I can definitely understand why it wouldn't be to a reader's tastes.
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Date: 2008-12-14 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-14 09:51 pm (UTC)Yet when we get to the scene where he goes to town on the violin and makes everybody in the room swoon (which, I grant you, was by itself a pretty cool scene; the descriptions of the music were very evocative), I was all "wait, wait, what? YOU HAD ME back with the scene where he's out of his head on absinthe, you didn't have to give me six more reasons why he's Awesome". ;)
('Cause wow, that scene where she shows up unexpectedly in his apartments and he's flat on his back with the absinthe? Very intense. Definitely my favorite scene in the whole book.)
I noticed Book 3 was on the way, yeah. I've been keeping an eye out for Book 2 in my recent visits to bookstores but so far haven't scared up a copy yet.